This is the second in a series of quick-ish blog posts on Ebola in light of all the stuff going on. Last time, I talked to you about the virology of Ebola, what it is and what it isn’t. The main take-home point from that post is that it is an RNA virus that is tiny, that belongs to a family of viruses along with Marburg virus, and that you should have read this paper by Peters and LeDuc before today’s “lesson.” We’re going to talk about the history of Ebola outbreaks today. There is a very good chronology of outbreaks as well as a history summary over at the CDC website. You can go over and look at those, but come back because I’m going to get into the details of the other history of Ebola, the social history. See, the current outbreak of Ebola can’t be summarized in “people got the virus, people got sick, and people died.” There

I saw something kind of weird happen yesterday as I stood in line at a sub shop to get one of their delicious subs. The incident in question reminded me of days in elementary school and high school. It also reminded me that humans can be evil to each other for no good reason. I thought about this incident a lot as the day wore on, and I talked about it to my wife last night. It really did bother me that much. So what happened?